We played the third, and final, play test of the Zombies by GASLIGHT rules last night at the HAWKs meeting. We’ll play zombies again, but we wanted to get the zombie rules squared away, because we want to publish them soon as a .pdf giveaway to promote the upcoming release of The GASLIGHT Compendium.
Zombies by GASLIGHT, which is about four pages long, uses To Be Continued… by GASLIGHT as its base. In this picture you see that one of the player’s figures failed its Scuffle roll in melee with a 20 and fell down. This figure eventually got up, disengaged, and survived to the end of the game.
The scenario involved a helicopter with some police and valuable medical equipment crashing. The players’ job was to get to the helicopter, rescue as many of the police as possible, and get off the table with the medical supplies. This scenario was the most fun we’ve had with zombies. About 25 zombies started on the table, most 12″ from the helicopter, but some behind the players on the road to safety. I thought this was going to be a quick scenario, since the players were driving trucks. In this post apocalyptic world, vehicle maintenance has suffered, and the players had trouble keeping their vehicles running. At one point, when a zombie reached into a truck window, the figure driving the truck failed her Scuffle with a 20 and fell out of the truck!
In this picture you can see the players’ trucks closing in on the downed helicopter crew, but the zombies are close behind. At this point the players began shooting like crazy, which just about doubled the number of zombies on the table in two turns. The black truck in the foreground had just finished running over four zombies, killing them.
In Zombies by GASLIGHT, if zombies are within in 12″ of a live human, they move toward the closest one. If that is not true, they move toward the nearest noise marker within 24″. If neither condition is true, they move in a random direction. In this picture, Sister Mary Smith and Wesson (in the group of figures just behind the truck in the foreground) was left behind battling zombies while the trucks continued to the helicopter. By the end of the game, she had 30 zombies crowded around her! Twice she was wounded. When wounded, you have to make a Save to see if you become a zombie. She passed both times, surviving until the end of the game. I may have to paint a medal on that figure for future games.
In the end, the players got one of the three crewmen and the medical supplies off the table. (They only got one of the three crew off, because at one point Sam fired a shotgun into the mob of zombies crowded around the unconscious figures. She killed almost all the zombies, but also took out two crewmen.)
This was great fun!
