Merry F-ing Christmas

We definitely lost one player for Road Rage and may lose another.

The womenfolk were out for some last minute rough and tumble savings. We sat around shooting the shit and it looks like we're going to join an in progress dungeon crawl or play a three handed zombie apocalypse game.

5X5 Arabia

Finished Nano with a day to spare.

Made the rounds at open game night. A handful of guys were hanging out away from family and full contact shopping.

I made a pitch for Risus of Arabia. They didn't mind the low power magic, they did have misgivings about Risus. I knew fudge was out, so I showed them Over the Fudge using 5X5 mechanics. It worked well enough.

Now that Jeff has published a micro-lite 5X5 rules set I should tinker an Arabian setting. I have all the research from RoA, it's a simple matter of hammering things into place.

Hiatus for the Holidays

All but one of us in this group are taking off November for NaNoWriMo.

We should reboot the first of December. If Tracy and Rick join in we will reboot at the highway using Mini Six.

We left the game with the group surrounded on the roof of the dry goods store.

Keep this handy for Close Encounters

Everyone is using player knowledge. I should call shenanigans, but I'm having too much fun.

Too much Grand Theft Auto. The first NPC encounter in a long while is a pit stop to load up on supplies and intel.

Slow going through the low buildings of Blufton. A cop and two gang bangers have training in small unit tactics. The hardware store is in the town square where there are enough zombies to form a swarm. The group also want to hit the diner and dry goods store.

The marina on the far side of the village is equidistant to the highway from the hardware store.

The group should work on boating skills. After Blufton Point the two nearest Preparedness hard sites are at Hunter Army Air Station at Savannah and Kings Bay Naval Base. A long way to go in a day-sailer.

Welcome to the Village

I might have to start random fright checks. Everyone is too well adjusted for a zombie apocalypse

Ammo low and food gone, they decide to detour into the village. They set up barriers of cars on the off ramp. Both to block zombies coming off the highway and give them an edge if they have to beat a hasty retreat.

Luckily my character knows the village from the times he did his disaster training.

Time to up the random encounters. We haven't been swarmed since before the bridge.

Fright Checks

Two of the players interested in MSZA joined in the pregame buffet. No hurry, but Blufton is proving more tricky than I planned. The big question is whether we by-pass it and shoot straight for the air station.


Sanity TNs for various events

Seeing a zombie feast: 8
Seeing your parents 'do it': 10
Fighting hand to hand with a zombie: 12
Being forced to watch Sex and the City: 15
Finding a zombie feast site: 17
Being forced to watch Sex and the City - the movie: 20
Trapped in a car by a zombie horde: 25
Being forced to watch Sex and the City - the movie 2: 28
Seeing your best friend eaten by a zombie horde: 30


I may have to edit that.


Fright Checks will either be a straight roll against Charm, the Charm attribute carries 'resolve', or Wit x Charm / 2 and using the stun table for shock.

Mini Six Zombie Apocalypse

OK, going into the woods was a misstep.

Changing to the Horror skill sets was smooth enough, still we may be losing our fourth hand.

At the last Labyrinth Lord game a regular and I talked about using Mini Six for a Zombie Apocalypse game. Jeff said two players were interested as well.

Character templates are set by game levels. Game levels are set by movies:

Dawn of the Dead

Day of the Dead

Land of the Dead.

SKETCH Highway from Hell update

Big mistake changing to the Classic Six attributes. One of the players is revering to his D&D roots, talking in terms of strength bonuses. Should have just used Mini Six for that change.

Might change to the less whimsical skill sets in SKETCH Horror.

Closed the bridge and set it alight. At the pre-game buffet we were still debating whether gas fire would do enough physical damage to zombies in the time allotted to do any good. We lack the resources, or time, to produce enough homemade napalm.

I am keeping track of resources, ammo, water, food, more in this setting than others.

We started into the woods, dusk is falling. Mike had the foresight to to bring the makings for torches. We found an emergency floodlight. Everyone is eager to push on to Blufton. The GPS battery is about to die. With it goes the map and compass. I think I'll change the Occult skill to a choice of an Arcane Knowledge subset - Eagle Scout, Garage Chemist, Weekend Outdoors Man.......

The scrounging rules shift to stumbling across bodies or the zombie carrying something from its past.

Change ups

Mike wants to try GMing SKETCH, to that end I've decided to convert to the Classic Six attributes and use the Steve template for my character, referring to me as Ana is weirding the guys out.

I hate to blog about current games.

I am cribbing the scavenger rules from Atomic Highway. Way cool.

I may try out The Ladder

HFH Update

May have to convert the attributes to the Classic Six. The cross talk over the skill sets proves not everyone shares my sense of whimsy about gaming.

Spent a lot of time on the bridge building a giant zombie trap. They like clambering over the truss, taunting the undead. They cleared room for more zombies on the bridge and setup cars to block them in once they torch it. Burned a lot of time and had a few close calls getting in and out of cars.

Fortunately the ruckus has drawn most of the zombies in the area toward the bridge.

The downside is they may have to brave the short cut through the woods at night.

HFH update

Everyone is on board for all five episodes of Highway from Hell. We did the talk-talk before the latest secession and picked through SKETCH Horror for additional rules.

Variable damage, 1D3 + weapon, and a '1' is a head shot.

Fear level is People Skills + Schoolin' / 2. We won't be using the mental break down chart, missing a Fear roll will be either Stunned or Makes a Break for It.

Tinkering with SKETCH .... don't

I've retracted most of the tinkering I've added to SKETCH. +1 to combat rolls for cover/range/take aim seems harmless so far.

+2 for specifically built zombie traps or barriers needs to be handled more judiciously. Although Mike shot-putting car batteries into the penned zombie horde was too funny.

Correction: it is a truss bridge, not a trestle bridge.

I'm going to shelve the idea of letting characters have Gifts, as in Fudge, for now.

SKETCH Advancement

I'm thinking about advancement for SKETCH. The core rules don't has any, it is built for 'one off' games. That and the math won't take much tinkering,

'Or Lower'
6 --- 100%
5 --- 83%
4 --- 66%
3 --- 50%
2 --- 33%
1 --- 16%

In SKETCH Horror, 'advancement' is handled by Gifts, non-assumed gear, and Fate Points. which buy re-rolls or add to damage.

Highway from Hell uses a broader point system, I was thinking of advancing specific skills within an attribute.

Say, from Ana's attribute at 3

Hurting Stuff:
Hurting Stuff with Your Bare Hands
Stabbing, Slashing and Bludgeoning
Shooting Stuff

she takes 'Hurting Stuff with a Tire Iron' at 4. Any other combat skill is still 3.

Or I could Gift her with a +1 tire iron.

Open Game Night

Open Game Night is settling in to its old groove. Mini Six Labyrinth Lord has three parties down the same dungeon.

The last few weeks, after the Risus group called it quits, four of us have rebooted the Highway from Hell game with SKETCH Evil Dead, and things have taken off like a highway on fire. I'm still tweaking the Build rules and the Hero Point system. The wanton destruction and arson has carried us to the trestle bridge where we managed to block one end, however it looks like we have a close fight on our hands, the tight spaces seem to hinder as much as help.

Conan-izing RoA

I found this cruising Conan stuff to pulp up Risus of Arabia.
http://hyboria.xoth.net/races/human_races.htm

A deal breaker in RoA has been no demi-humans, this might bridge the gap. Perks for various human races.It need not mean bonus dice, it could be handled as a sliding scale on TN for specific tasks.

Checking In........

Been a while

The Open Game Night Group is back. Risus was taken off the table early. We've been gaming an unimaginative D6 based Labyrinth Lord.

I may have a sub-group willing to game a Risus of Arabia adventure. Fingers crossed.