A small summer (weekend) campaign - Campaign report page 2

[Braxandur]

This summer I'm planning to hold a gaming weekend during which all kind of gangs that have survived some sort of apocalypse are hunting for loot in a newfound territory. We plan to use our High Octane ruleset, which consists mostly of Gorka morka rules wxcept for humans with more human like cehilces. We used this before in a mad max like setting. Here after I described the campaign as far as it is planned and will write any new ideas. Off course I'm open for suggestions.

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A new part of the wastes has been discoverd where supplies can be found... All gangs want this!

During the game players first move out into a new part of the wastes where they hope to find supplies for their enclave/gang/whatever. The initial phase of the game is the “recon” scenario. It is randomly decided which two players play against each other. Any odd player left out after dividing is lucky and did not encounter opponents.

After this first part, players can visit the different available territories of the wastes in the hopes of finding loot. Each round all players can divide their gangs into two groups and send each out to a territory to loot it. Players secretly write on a piece of paper which part of their gang will be scouting. Thereafter all players show where they go. Should two or more players be going to the same territory, a “grab the loot” scenarios will need to be played with loot counters on the table. Should a player have send a part of his gang to a territory without opponents, he get the loot without a fight.

There is a maximum amount of time that a location can be looted before it is empty
Players also opt to invade the location of an opponent, leave part of their gang behind for defense of their base, or ambush an opponent’s gang. Should they want to do this, then they need to write this down on a paper instead of the location that they want to scout. Players can agree to work together to attack another player, however if they can’t agree on how they divide any loot should the defending player of a raid or ambush bottle, then the game continues until only one player is let, who can claim the entire bounty.

After x rounds (amount depends on amount of participants) each gang decides that the area is practically empty and all the gangs travel homewards. During the way back, gangs can opt to try to go for an all out assault on each other the gain (or loose) more loot. The scenario “The long road back” simulates this. All the loot that players have should be divided over their vehicles with no more than 50% on one vehicle (25% if it’s a bike).

The winner of the entire campaign is the player that has the most loot in his possession after the last scenario.

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There are a number of parts of the wastes that can be looted, which are:
Location   Loot   Times it can be looted*
Desert   1D6   20
Mine   2D4   8
Junkyard   2D4   8
Power station   2D4   2
Garage   2D4   2
Town   2D6   3
The Mall   2D6   3
Opponents territory   2D6   
(* amount depends on amount of participants)

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Scenarios:
“Recon”
The recon scenario is a rolling road scenario in which the player that manages to either get the most of his gang in rating of the other side of the table. In the case one player bottles, all models of the player that did not bottle that are still on the table and also count as if they made it.
The winners (including the player that didn’t have to play this round) have an advantage in the first “grab the loot” scenario”.

“Grab the loot”
Players that have the same scenario normally arrive on different table edges. Randomly determine the table edge from which each player comes. No two players should come from the same direction.
The amount of loot counters to be placed on the board is written behind the location.

“Ambush”
To be written

“Raid”
To be written

“The long road back”
To be written

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I Already started to work on some scenery for the town. The buildings are mostly plasticville. The barricades for the windos will be magnetized and can be placed if I want to, so the builings can be used in multiple kind of games. For the roads I plan on using left over vinyl that  I have few square meters of.

Anyhow, some first pictures:
Wip of the buildings


Possible Layout


Possible Layout (other angle)


A small house showing the magnetised barricades with a junkyard next to it (and a church in the back)


A cabin in the woods


A barn with some fields next to it


Comments and ideas are very welcome!

[Braxandur]

Should have mentioned that these pictures were shot with my mobile phone in the evening. I'll have to make sure there is soem juice in the camera battery next time :p

[Dr.Falkenhayn]

sorry, i got distracted from all the Boardgames in the Background,just tell me these aren't all yours 
What was the Question again? 

Seriously looks like a promising start for a good Campaign.Be nice to see all the different Gangs coming together 

[Braxandur]

sorry, i got distracted from all the Boardgames in the Background,just tell me these aren't all yours  

  They are... to make matters worse,  you only see a small portion on the pictures  

I'm not sure about the gangs, I know that Pil wants to come with muties, FM (another friend of ours) probably will bring scavengers, I'll have an enclave (former police) force and Raz... euhm, actuallt I have no clue what he might bring.

[Hatemonger]

Sounds like a great way to spend a weekend of gaming! Do you expect to have some outdoor tables for enjoying the summer weather? 

I don't know if you are looking for specific critiques, but if you care to indulge a bit of my own amateur game design, I have a few suggestions.

Should a player have send a part of his gang to a territory without opponents, he get the loot without a fight.

This is the main problem I run into whenever we try any kind of map-based campaign. On one hand, this seems to be the "realistic" method of handling such a recon situation, and so it supports the premise/theme of the campaign, but not really the purpose - which I assume it to play games with each other!

Aaron and Bill check the town, so they fight. Charles checks the mine, David checks the open desert; what do they do, sit around for a turn?

I would suggest making sure everyone gets a game. Maybe they get a little bonus for trying a place no one else chose (you find a little scrap and move on), or they get to try 2-3 times before someone else inevitably finds them. Or better, just assume that if they don't find another gang in the same place, they will run into each other on the way home, and fight there.

The winner of the entire campaign is the player that has the most loot in his possession after the last scenario.

Another major problem I have with campaigns is the Runaway Leader phenomenon: e.g. Charles did so well in his first 3 games that no one can possibly catch up to him - maybe he got 3 locations of loot for free without a fight? Imagine if a player won the campaign without ever playing a game!

So, your kind of "last chance" scenario has the potential to be very good. That way, nothing is guaranteed until the very end, and that will be good for keeping everyone invested in the game, even if they do poorly early on and start to fall behind.

There is a maximum amount of time that a location can be looted before it is empty

I suggest making this random, even as simple as exhausting if you roll a 1 on a D6. I mean, if a spot can be looted "two times", why wouldn't the first gang just take it all? More likely, they always take everything they can find, but the next gang can hope they missed some of the good stuff.

The barricades for the windos will be magnetized and can be placed if I want to, so the builings can be used in multiple kind of games.

Not game related, but I think this is a cool idea, and I'd be interested to see how you do it. More pics?

- H8

[Braxandur]

Thanks for the sound advice! I completly agree that there is a good chance players would not meet each other  and having them then meet on the way is a nice option. I'll incorporate that in the campaign

A "last chance" scenario is defenitly needed to keep things tense till the end. next to this playesr can opt to raid an opponents territy intead of seaching somewhere else for loot. Hopefully these measures will be enough to stop a runaway leader.

Random exhaustion of the locations is a good idea as well. I might give different location different chances of being exhausted, or make the chance bigger every time a location is visited.

I'll take some pictures of where I put the magnets and how this works. I felt a bit stupid though not having thought of something like this earlier, since I could never choose between painting the building barricaded or not and so never really started on them.

[Red Orc]

What you could do is assign each location a secret score, of the number of times it can be looted. There's no reason a place can't be looted more than once - if time (the turn time, whether it's an hour, a day, or a week they spend there) and manpower (the number of people searching) are limited, there's no reason to assume one gang can clear a location of everything useful in one go. It's perfectly feasable to think of the loot in terms of 'loads' - one gang in one turn can take one load of loot; if they come back, or if another gang arrives, in another turn, they can also take one load, until there are no more loads left to take.

Alternatively, you could give the loot difficulty levels. To find the loot, the player must throw a die and score less than the 'loot level'. Say the territory is level 5 - it's pretty easy to find things there. A level 3 territory is a bit tricky to find things in, and a level 1 territory is very hard.

You could even combine those two ideas and have the 'loot level' decrease by one every time it's successfully looted. So Gang A loots a level 5 territory - they throw a 2 so easily find the load they can take away. When Gang B arrives next turn, the easiest to find stuff is gone so the territory is now level 4; but they try to loot the territory and throw a 6 - failure! Perhaps they were distracted by catching Radiation Flu, or the stuff is well hidden; anyway, they stick around and try again next turn. This time they throw a 3 and find a load of loot; etc.

You could also have a bonus or penalty (as you like) if the player throws exactly the number - if it's a level 4 territory and the player throws a 4, maybe that means double treasure, or a special treasure that allows them an advantage in the next game (a bit of kit, a new power source or some ammo for a funky weapon perhaps, or maybe access to some kind of 'mercenary') - or maybe they find treasure but it's booby-trapped an some of their fighters are out of action next game.

Anyway, just some ideas there for you to play with should you wish. Good luck with the campaign, please keep us informed as to how it's progressing, as some of us love campaigns!

[Braxandur]

Based on the good advice from your formed post I thought about a new way of working with the different locations.

The different terrain sections get a rating showing the chance gangs have of finding loot. The chance will get progrsessivly worse every time a location is raided. If one or more gangs arrives at a location, roll 2D6 to see if loot is being found. the amount that can be found is the loot value. This is also the amount of loot that should be placed on the table a fight takes place at a location.

e.g.
Terain type -=- loot value -=- chance of finding loot
Desert -=- 1D6 (9+)
Mine -=- 2D4 (5+)
Junkyard -=- 2D4 (5+)
Power station -=- 2D4 (5+)
Garage -=- 2D4 (5+)
Town  -=- 2D6 -=- (3+)
The Mall -=- 2D6 (3+)
Opponents territory -=- 2D6 -=- No chance roll.

Each time a location is looted the chance of finding loot goes up with two points, to a maximum of 9+. Because more experiences gang members or larger gangs have a better chance of finding loot, players can add 1 point to their roll for every 500 points in excess of gang rating that is searching the location. This bonus is not used if multiple gang meet at the same location, since they be too busy with fighting to effectivly put more effort into searching.

Keeping the max at 9+ means there will be roughly 28% chance of finding loot in any location, but hopefully also make players focus somewhat on the same locations, giving plenty of fights

[Braxandur]

Hi all, it's been a few busy weeks, so not much work has been reported on this project. I busy with the LPL and had three warhammer tournaments these month, which sort of left less time for this project. Still, I'm busy thinking about what kind of gang I'll be using, which will probably be (again) an enclave police force.

I did mange to not only take picture of the magnetized barricades, but also write a short piece about it on my blog:
http://braxandur.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/zombie-games-and-scenery-building/

In about two weeks I'm going on holiday, which means enough time for thinking about the campaign and writing up ideas

[SBRPearce]

A suggestion for both the "looting out" problem and the problem of keeping every player engaged:

It takes time and effort to "work" a zone for its loot - pickin's and salvage need to be dug up and cleaned off, farmers need to be intimidated into forking over their hidden supplies, etc. So each turn (representing a couple of days, maybe) each player can send out a couple of scouting groups to look over the zones he chooses. Based on their reports (Zone A has Salvage, there are Farmers in Zone C, etc) he can set up "operations" that will have a chance to yield Loads of loot each turn. Or he can raid his opponents' operations...

Of course, those loads of loot have to get taken back to each team's base, which allows for armed convoy encounters - it's so much easier to just steal the stuff instead of going to the time and effort of working it yourself!

[Paleskin]

Excellent looking terrain set up,should play well,how many minis you expect on the table at once?

Can't believe how tidy those shelves are in the background!

[Braxandur]

Hi all, now the LPL is over I feel I'm finally able to funnel energy back into this project

@SBRPearce: Thanks for the nice suggestions, I like the idea of scouting and starting up an operations, but we also don't mind if some players have less to do in a turn except getting refreshments for the rest of us There is already a possibility of looting anothers camp, but attacking convoys also sounds great.

@Paleskin: We expect to have about 2-3 vehicles and up to 10 men (including drivers and gunners of the vehicles) on the table per side. This was the amount we had during our last high octane campaign. We sometimes had three players on the table at the same time and didn't have a lot of scenery on the tables. This time there will be a bit more scenery.

Since painting moved a bit to the backburner (possible got a bit of an overdose with the LPL) I decided to do something else and continued with building scenery. During my holiday I found pretty cheap 5mm styrofoam sheets and brought these back home.

On the following picture you can see the world works warehouse, which I already build ages ago and a recently build building from the downtown set:


The next building is already mounted on the sheet. I figure I can get about 2-3 building per sheet and got 12 for 12 euro


I'm not yet sure if I'll print out sidewalks or make a few more of styrofoam itself. It just depends on time. Hopefully I manage to shoot a few more pictures tonight.

[Braxandur]

I managed to cut the sheets out and put the building together for the most part using "krammetjes" (sorry, I don't know the English for this). While it doesn't give the best fit for the walls, at least I can take the buildings apart if needed.

A few more buildings and then it's time for putting some debris on the streets






Following are some pictures of the krammetjes in action:

[Braxandur]

I finished the building on the last set of pictures and went a bit more up towards the sky with the next building. One more tall building to go, but first I'm going to work on some smaller ones for filling the empty space on the table.

[Braxandur]

Paintingwise not a lot has happened on the front of my gang, except for going through my collection and finding the models I'm planning to use. I'll probably will just use my police/swat miniatures. I see these as a force that managed to sustain itself when the governement fell and guns, equiment and a good holdout became important. This off course also means that I really should start some work on the World Works Police department...

Anyhow I have put together a few more of the hollow structures that can/will nicely fill up table space.
the nexxt few pictures should give an indication of possible setups. With another 3-5 buildings I think it's time to switch to the props (garbage cans, road signs, sidewalks, vehicles, etc.) Luckily I already have painted quite a few of these for some former board layouts. a few parks or large open areas might also fit in nicely.













As can be seen, I still need to finish the roofs and lock the walls in place, but in all I'm getting a nice indication of the size of the setup and how much more I need to build.

I'd also really like to use this setup in some of my zombie games and am wondering if it's otherwise possible to play deadzone on this table (I can mark the 3" zones with tape on the tabletop)