Zombies as Weather

 

It's a subject that has been discussed to death the last decade or so, much in the way ninjas were in the 80's. 

Resident Evil games, Walking Dead, Shaun of The Dead, Zak Snyders Dawn of The Dead, several other zombie films with various takes on the genre, etc of the last 20 years or so have made spooky, hungry ghouls pop culture phenomenon. 

It's probably one of my favorite games, Dead of Winter, that has me in a zombie state of mind these days. Probably Walking Dead as well. A lot of the TV I stream is Pluto TV, and they have a Walking Dead channel constantly showing seasons 1-4. 

When I started playing D&D as a kid, I was super into the magical, Mythic dungeon concept. It was kind of bizarre, kind of scary, creepy; a mystery, usually a horrifying one, is around every corner (unless you buy into that Gygaxian/Grognardian "every third room should be empty" palaver). But after years of them, they are still fun but lose a lot of that mysterious wonder. When you watch Romero's Night of The Living Dead as a kid, those lumbering, weak ass dead people terrifying. I mean, they are dead! 

But then you get older, still thinking zombies are gross and creepy, but you start to get into the weeds a bit more on the subject. You're first major question is "how did this happen." Is it germ warfare gone wrong? Or is there a supernatural explanation? Each movie offers up possible clues to what might have happened. Astronauts bringing back radiation is mentioned on the telly in Night of the Living Dead. I think it was the original Dawn of the Dead poster that read "when there is no more room in hell.." 

On Walking Dead, after season two zombies became third class co-stars: a backseat to evil humans. The Guv'na, The Wolves, The Whisperer's, that boss from hell Negan. Zombies Are now just the backdrop, more or less treated the same as a form of bad weather. You plan for it. You have procedures (grab the umbrella, put on a coat, gas up the chainsaw). But the show has long since become about interactions of the characters and the human threat. And for any of us who love Mad Max movies we know what the threat is. If The Road Warrior had zombies, Lord Humongous and Wes would still remain the scariest things in the Outback.  Anyway, when in season two our heroes ended up on Hershel's farm, it was an area light on zombies (spoiler: they were getting roped and locked up in a barn). 

Fucking Hershel. Fucking Rick. Fucking farm. 

Speaking of that season, I disliked it quite a bit at first. Watching it I already knew why they were going to be exclusively at a single location the whole time, besides the odd trip to the bar for a drink or the pharmacy for pregnancy tests to see if Lori was rocking a Shane-baby, or birth control so Maggie could get her Glen on. But it was known that AMC was shifting the majority of the money for other, more critically acclaimed shows like Mad Men and Breaking bad, series that flounder a couple of seasons then blew up into huge ratings grabbers. And honey gets the money. But when I watch it now, I appreciate what happened in the same way I appreciate Spielberg not getting the shark to work. The toned-down season where characters talked their asses off in the kitchen about morals and dishwashing duties ended up putting the show in the direction of the new world still being about people, and zombies just a new normal in the background. Kind of like weather. And as was always kind of promised the human foes turned out to be often scarier than The Walkers. And the characters by recent seasons are just desensitized to the undead. 

Yeah, the farm kind of got what it deserved

It's a natural progression. Night of the Living Dead is about a single night. You might be stuck in a small farmhouse with a near catatonic lady and a family headed by a loud-mouther boor, but it's all about the zombie problem. Front and center. In the original Dawn of the Dead, it's a messed up, horrifying situation. But once you get into the mall, clear it out and lock it up, a few months later your thoughts turn to food and shopping and all that. You might have to deal with the ghouls now and again, but it's just another part of the world now. Another danger. But one you better take seriously. The bikers who show up at the end of the movie are having fun, but they pay the price for not taking "zombie weather" seriously. 

The Dead of Winter boardgame pretty much treats the zombies like weather conditions. When you leave the colony and go out in the field, or any time you want to kill a zombie, you roll a 12-sided die and the result is abstract. A wound (of which you can have three before dying), a frostbite condition (a wound that keeps on giving), or most rarely a zombie bite which can not only kill you but give you the hard choice of saving the victim or risking others getting infected and dying. 

As the actual weather effect of frostbite, regular generic wound, and zombie bite are on one dice, it's all baked together. It's all "exposure." From the cold, from the everyday hazards of a wild world, and from a good old zombie bite. Sure, there are zombie counters that can overrun an area eventually and cause characters to die in the location if you don't set up enough barricades or kill some zombies off, but once again it's like mother nature. A flood. Rather than pile up sandbags you try to thin them out. Zombies becoming once again an everyday thing. At least abstractly. "Make sure and take your galoshes and shotgun, dear!"

And just like Walking Dead or any modern zombie things, it's all about the characters. Dead of Winter has great characters galore, all with a special ability. It's what they do and what they get away with (or don't) where the fun lies. How they deal with the natural hazards, which includes the undead, is just dealing with nature.  

Whatever they are or how they came to be, zombies on a series such as Walking Dead are kind of in the background. It took a while, but the characters are kind of desensitized from being around them, easily killing them, living with the problem for years. Much like how we think of the weather. If its mild no problem. If there is a storm and threat of flood or heavy snow, we up our game and put it at least temporarily to the forefront of our thoughts. When it calms down, its back to not thinking of it. Same with getting used to the zombie problem. Big herd of them comes through its battle stations. Just a couple of them show up, meh, get out your gun or knife much like getting a raincoat or snow shovel out when you need it. 

You deal with it, but afterwards you don't wonder how this could be a science or supernatural thing. Why they can exist for years without blood or working organs. Why they eat and eat and never seem to have poopy pants. Why the hell their shoes don't fall off after a few days. You just deal with it like any other natural problem, then wonder what board game to bust out tonight.

 I recommend it be Dead of Winter.

Your chance to ask that cute girl you just met if she'd 
like to join you

 

Favorite board game obsessions of recent years part 4 - Dead of Winter

OK, though Talisman will probably remain a forever fave of me and my fellow board warriors in my group, DoW has become a close second. 

My local besties B & L sold their house and hit the road in a huge pick up and a luxury mobile trailer to see the country. Until we discovered Talisman had a digital online version, our gaming pretty much halted. But last summer, when they were managing a nice RV park near Salt Lake City, I made the 6 hour drive to spend a few nights in one of the parks hotel rooms, and besides hiking in the local national park (and spending a bit of time in the RV parks rustic pub) we spent most of our time  playing the shit out of the board games I have mentioned previously, but especially our newest jam Dead of Winter. 

Here is Board Game Geeks description:

 "Crossroads" is a game series from Plaid Hat Games that tests a group of survivors' ability to work together and stay alive while facing crises and challenges from both outside and inside. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game, the first title in this series, puts 2-5 players in a small, weakened colony of survivors in a world in which most of humanity is either dead or diseased, flesh-craving monsters. Each player leads a faction of survivors, with dozens of different characters in the game.

Dead of Winter is a meta-cooperative psychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition, but for each individual player to achieve victory, they must also complete their personal secret objective, which could relate to a psychological tick that's fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or (worst of all) vengeance against the colony! Games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing. Work toward the group's goal, but don't get walked all over by a loudmouth who's looking out only for their own interests!

Dead of Winter is an experience that can be accomplished only through the medium of tabletop games, a story-centric game about surviving through a harsh winter in an apocalyptic world. The survivors are all dealing with their own psychological imperatives, but must still find a way to work together to fight off outside threats, resolve crises, find food and supplies, and keep the colony's morale up.

Dead of Winter has players making frequent, difficult, heavily-thematic, wildly-varying decisions that often have them deciding between what's best for the colony and what's best for themselves. The rulebook also includes a fully co-operative variant in which all players work toward the group objective with no personal goals.

That all sounds cool, and in reality its all true. There is a certain amount of complexity (nothing like some of the more popular Lovecraft games) but its fairly easy to pick up if you are focused at least for the first hour of the game. Most of its mechanics are intuitive. 

So you are living in a walled off community. You each start with two characters, with stats related to fighting, leadership ability, and scavenging. For instance the soldier has a high charisma and fighting ability, while the schoolteacher has improved scavenging in the school location. There are not hit points per se, but exposure to the elements and the zombie hoards outside can inflict wounds, and a zombie bite might outright kill you, and endanger others (if you get bit near others then you have to roll exposure for them - basically the dead character is now a zombie attacking them. A lot of elements in this game you have to make assumptions like that because, thankfully, the creators didn't want to waste to much of your time on fiddly details). 

The colony has its problems from turn to turn. When you use resources the trash piles up, affecting morale. You also need a certain amount of food to keep every body happy (besides characters there are a few nameless non coms you have to take care of). You are constantly trying to maintain a balance to keep morale from going down.

Besides taking out trash and such, the characters can go outside on their turn (rolling for exposure to the weather and zombie bites each time) and do some scavenging for food, weapons, medicine, and tools. Locations include the school, police station, grocery, and library. Just like the colony gates these areas can become overrun with zombies, so killing them now and again is a good tactic to keep things from going out of control. If a place gets overrun then characters start dying. 

When starting a new game you pull a card for the entire games tone and goal (keeping people fed, worrying about the trash, finding a certain amount of medicine, etc). Each turn you pull a card for that turns immediate goal (just lesser versions of the main game goal) and each turn another player will pull a crossroads card for you before your turn. That card has certain events that happen to a character on their turn, and often depends on certain things like if a particular character is in play or an action the character might take. Crossroads might also include an immediate event that almost always includes a choice to be made. Maybe you encounter a bus load of kids and have to decide if you can take them in and feed them, or if you abandon them (often all players vote on the outcome). Morale is often involved here. 

Then there is the goal of each player. At the start of a game each players secretly pulls a card for that. It might include things like end the game with a certain amount of guns, or to have a certain amount of characters under your control. Mixed in with these random motivations and requirements is a traitor card. There is a good chance a player will pull one, and buddy, these can be a pain. It usually requires that the game ends with zero morale on the board and you needing to fulfill certain requirements similar to the turn by turn cards. These are often seemingly impossible feats to accomplish. You need to work at fulfilling your requirements and lowering the colony morale without tipping off the others that you are a traitor. The players can vote to kick somebody out, and that just makes it all harder. Though being a bad guy in plain site can be fun. A nothing to lose scenario. I had a habit of pulling the traitor card in more than half the games we played, and had concluded that they were impossible. But in one of our last sessions I actually pulled a win out of my ass in the final turn. I needed morale to go zero, and I needed to have more characters in hand than anybody else. It wasn't going to happen, but suddenly the stars were right. Morale was low. I realized only one player had more characters than me.  I managed to get a crossroads card that gave me two more characters, evening me up with another player. I still had a move left so I had my karate guy move to a location with somebodies janitor character and kill him in a fight. That allowed me to have the most characters and brought morale to zero to end the game. It was an exciting win in a game that most of the time everybody loses, and it took the other players by complete surprise. So if you are the traitor it can pay to wait things out and hope the stars are right for a win in the final turns. 

There seems to be endless variation because not only are there a lot of characters to choose from, there are tons of all the cards. The crossroads deck is huge. So no games should ever play the same twice. 

I love a lot of the characters, but one of the funniest is the mall Santa. An old drunk who still wears his suit, the colony actually gets a boost in morale if he dies. 

Like Epic Spell Wars and King of Tokyo, this happens to be another game I encountered on Will Wheaton's Tabletop show (I actually saw it in a store originally but watching the episode cinched me buying it). I find it one of the most entertaining episodes and it features the late Grant Imahara and Ashely Johnson of Critical Role and The Last of Us fame. Its especially fun because you don't find out who the traitor is till the end of the episode, and its a great twist. 

There are other editions of the game I have yet to sample, but that in itself might be a good reason to go to a convention for the board game room. 

Its another long form game, usually taking 3 hours for three players. On game days we liked to play a game of this, and if we had another hour or so do a few shots of our shorter games. I love this game and King of Tokyo and Spell Wars, so days I got to play all of them were a great day for me. 

Oh, also, I love the art by Fernanda Suarez. There are certainly some beautiful looking people in the apocalypse. 

Sith Lord Lich and the Three-Headed Apprentice

This weeks KOTOR session was an action-packed blast. The group has been trapped in a derelict, haunted space station along the Hyperspace routes. Some decades ago during the Sith War the Dark Lord known as Darth Sinaes and his apprentices took over a Republic ship repair station and committed mass murder and horrible atrocities there, to the point of the Dark Lords apprentices themselves being appalled and turning on the master. Although they managed to kill him, his evil lingered in his body and allowed him to be a Dark Side Lich. Sinaes used his unholy power to meld the apprentices into one single body (three faces and three sets of arms, but just one pair of legs and a torso) that could use three regular lightsabers and one double lightsaber simultaneously. Oh, the horror! Along with his three-in-one apprentice, zombified bodies of old victims, and some other monstrosities, Darth Sinaes has lurked in the station an occasionally used it to lure unwary spacefarers to their doom, to become part of his growing undead army. Also trapped on the station was the ghost of a Jedi victim, Amelia, who had come along years ago. Amelia had her spirit locked here because of all the corruption, but she came in handy as a warning to players. She was able to tell the party the history Sinaes and his corruption of the place.

I originally meant this to be more or less a space dungeon for the characters to crawl around in, and it was, but in the end I mostly focused on combat encounters. The party had fun in the previous game fighting zombie hordes and a couple mutated monsters, but in this session it was time to face Sinaes and his hideious apprentices. Good thing we had a full group that session.

The apprentice managed to put a lot of fear and damage into the party, before he was ultimately defeated by a combination of good rolls and the infamous Force Grip of Pauls Khil (tentacle faced humanoid) force user. During this battle Terry’s Cathar (cat lady) Jedi Lucia was taken down with a killing blast (not so deadly due to the use of her last force point) of force lighting, but the spirit of Amelia used the force to bond with Lucia and not just bring her back to full health, but increase her stats and abilities for the encounter, allowing her to jump right back into the fray.

The party was now able to put the screws to Darth Sinaes, who I had planned to have run away but I hesitated so he could gloat and get an attack in. Bad move, because they were all over him. After some fierce melee and force use, Darth Sinaes set off explosions in the hull of the station that immediately started explosive decompression and loss of life support. Even though Andy’s Mandalorian soldier had Mando armor with life support, the party on a whole only got a couple more licks in on the beat-up Sith Lord before they had to make it for the ship (in cinematic fashion barely escaping).

This was the most exciting session yet, and I really got a kick out of it (and the players seemed to as well). Although faced with the possibility of a powerful enemy escaping from them, they mixed it up with a real challenge for a change and came out with flying colors. And Terry’s Jedi Lucia gets a colorful addition to her bio – namely, the soul of another Jedi whom now sort of haunts her (in a non-evil way), but also gives her a little bonus to a couple of stats and hit points when she is in contact with her. This will make for some interesting role-play down the line, methinks. I think Terry may have been struggling with what exactly the personality of Lucia was, but now she for sure has an interesting angle to work from. I originally though Amelia might do this bonding thing with the male Jedi (I thought he would get the focus of damage and be the first knocked out of the fight), and also thought it would be funny if her spirit bonded with the Wookiee, but in the end I am glad Terry will be the one dealing with it. Her character seemed the least fleshed out.

Next week we play in Dan’s palace up in Bel Air above Mulholland Blvd, and the party will finally arrive at the Galactic Core and the planet Coruscant for more mayhem. Man, I think I have finally decided that I like this game! (the prequel movies, not so much).